When an author generates a document that includes a series of mathematical expressions, the author often wants the expressions to be formatted in a certain way to enhance the readability and to make the workflow from one expression to the next obvious. For example, an author often will want a series of expressions to be aligned at the equal sign to clearly delimit what has changed on either the right or left hand side of the expressions. Generally, expression editing tools associated with word processing and presentation software programs align the expressions as a whole, e.g., left align, right align, or center the expressions. For example, the expression editing tools generally align the first character of the expression with the left margin of the page, regardless of any character or element within the expression. To format the set of expression in other ways, the users of these expression editing tools generally must endure a tedious, manual, editing process to separately format each expression. Further, the editing process is often frustrated or complicated when the viewing space, such as on a web browser, changes width. Such a change in width invariably results in undesired formatting. It is with respect to these and other considerations that the present invention has been made.